Despite a wave of complaints, pushback from top universities, lawsuits, and accusations of bias, Proctorio's client list grew over 500% from 2019 to 2021
Despite students' complaints and the coming return to in-person learning, Proctorio and its rivals are betting on a lucrative future. Tweets: @ncaplanbricker , @jessifer , @newyorker , @bonstewart , @jofrhwld , @krystafauria , @newyorker , @fennelaurora , @shorterpearson , @benwolfevision , @cayneletizia , @autumm , @jessifer , @hypervisible , and @hypervisible Tweets: Nora Caplan-Bricker / @ncaplanbricker : I wrote about remote test-proctoring companies, which were among the big winners of the pandemic—and which may be hanging onto their gains despite sustained protest from students and countless reports that their software discriminates, for @NewYorker https://www.newyorker.com/... Jesse Stommel / @jessifer : Remote proctoring is not inevitable. Don't let your institution normalize this technology. It's racist, unethical, and contributes to a culture of suspicion in education that makes the work of teachers harder and frustrates our best pedagogical intentions. https://www.newyorker.com/... @newyorker : Before taking a test with Proctorio, one Black student turns on every light in his bedroom and positions a ring light so that it shines directly into his eyes. Still, “I'm going to have to try a couple times before the camera recognizes me,” he said. https://nyer.cm/Pgzv44r Bonnie Stewart / @bonstewart : i missed this headline/pull quote combo a couple days ago due to the death in the family, but... STOP NORMALIZING PROCTORING, MEDIA/HIGHER ED/HUMANS. it's harmful. it reinforces racism & pedagogically outdated practices. it normalizes surveillance. STOP. https://www.newyorker.com/... Josef Fruehwald / @jofrhwld : i can't read this whole thing. from training students to revoke the privacy of their eye gaze and body movement, to the dehumanization of students of color by not recognizing their presence, it's horrifying https://twitter.com/... Krysta Fauria / @krystafauria : Took the GRE during covid and hated it for this reason. https://twitter.com/... @newyorker : “I feel like I can't take a test in my natural state anymore, because they're watching for all these movements, and what I think is natural, they're going to flag,” one student who takes exams with an online monitoring technology said. https://nyer.cm/MJ8dTym Fenneladon Privacyasaurus Aurorateratops / @fennela … : Companies, schools, teachers are repeatedly demonstrating a lack of integrity by selling, using, enforcing these child-abuse-as-a-service “academic integrity” tools. These tools further entrench policing & surveillance into schools and cause demonstrated, ongoing, massive harm. https://twitter.com/... Chuck Pearson / @shorterpearson : The exposure of Olsen's hypocrisy in claiming his exam-proctoring software is necessary while being interrupted by a four-year old son on a Zoom interview - behavior Proctorio would flag - is brilliant. Must-read stuff. https://twitter.com/... Dr Ben Wolfe / @benwolfevision : Remote proctoring: today's entry in “engineering solutions to human problems.” Engineering isn't the solution here. https://twitter.com/... Cayne Letizia / @cayneletizia : Cheating during the pandemic? Interesting article on virtual proctoring. #ungrading “Instead, the variable that most reliably drives cheating is pressure-of the kind that students feel when a single test determines a semester's grade, or when certifying exam decides a career.” https://twitter.com/... @autumm : Finally got a chance to read this I continue to be so angered by how these companies think they can define “normal” and punish anyone who falls outside of their definition https://www.newyorker.com/... Jesse Stommel / @jessifer : Glad for the opportunity to be interviewed about remote proctoring for this @NewYorker piece by @NCaplanBricker. Also features @SheaSwauger @mathbabedotorg @hypervisible and incredibly important stories from students forced to deal with this wretched, anti-pedagogical tech. https://twitter.com/... @hypervisible : “Academic integrity” tho 🙄 https://twitter.com/... @hypervisible : Long but worthwhile read. Should note off the top that even though these companies are attempting to strike a softer tone, even their rationales and “improvements” are woefully inadequate. The tech is inherently discriminatory. https://www.newyorker.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Remote proctoring was the pandemic's education windfall: services like Examity scaled widely through 2020 even as students flagged invasiveness and security gaps. Proctorio rode that wave hardest — a client list up more than 500% from 2019 to 2021 — while absorbing the sector's heaviest resistance.
The backlash was already material by early 2021, when schools and organizations began dropping Proctorio outright over privacy complaints, and sharpened with research showing its OpenCV-based face model fails on Black faces more than half the time. The New Yorker's reporting frames the core tension: growth persisted despite defections, lawsuits, and university pushback.
First-order effects
- Students and faculty at adopting institutions remain subject to surveillance-style exam monitoring now, while Proctorio simultaneously manages active lawsuits, university-level objections, and customer attrition from the same period of hypergrowth.
- Institutions weighing contracts must price in documented failure modes: the facial-recognition bias findings give procurement committees concrete grounds to reject or renegotiate deals.
Second-order effects
- Rivals inherit both sides of the dynamic — competitors like Examity and later Honorlock capture demand from Proctorio defectors, but the criticism of keystroke-and-cursor tracking as punishing normal behavior shows the entire category gets tarred by one vendor's scandals.
- The pending return to in-person learning threatens the demand spike itself, forcing proctoring vendors to defend pandemic-era gains rather than assume continued expansion — hence their bet on hybrid and online exam formats persisting.
Third-order effects
- If vendors hold their gains, exam surveillance normalizes into standing higher-ed infrastructure rather than an emergency measure, extending toward broader student data collection of the kind seen when [[a:846923|a California college layered homework trackers and e-proctoring into daily movement monitoring]].
- Sustained litigation and bias-audit pressure point toward procurement becoming the battleground: accreditation bodies and state systems, not individual outraged students, may end up deciding which monitoring practices are acceptable.
The trend: Pandemic-era edtech surveillance is consolidating from emergency adoption into durable infrastructure, with institutional procurement and civil-rights scrutiny replacing student protest as the binding constraint.